


Sorrow, Not Remorse

by icarus_chained



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Aftermath, Apologies, F/M, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post GoS. Mary Watson and Sherlock Holmes, in the aftermath of his return, picking apart all that lies between them. For John's sake, maybe. But also for their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorrow, Not Remorse

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fic. Spoilers for _Game of Shadows_.

The doorbell, when it rang, was harsh and jangling and sounded for all the world like someone was trying to pull it down in a fit of temper and/or fear. The housekeeper, bustling out into the hall, let out a growl of offended propriety, and a few choice words concerning vandal tradesmen who should bloody know better.

Mary, from her seat in the drawing room, smiled faintly instead, and set down her cup. That would be Mr Holmes, then.

He came into the room in a flurry of agitated movements and muttered imprecations directed at the housekeeper behind him, John, possibly her, and a few other people besides, closing the door smartly behind him to cut off attack from the rear. His smile, when he turned to her, was stiff and forced and really more of a grimace than anything.

And he couldn't keep still. At all.

"Mrs Watson," he grinned, cheery and rigid and sharply pointed, moving stiffly forward and looking at anything at all that wasn't her. "Lovely to see you. You're looking well. Though you ought to get a new housekeeper, you know. Dreadful woman, very rude. Also doesn't see to the fireplaces properly. You should speak to her about that."

Mary ducked her head, pressing back her small smile and picking her tea back up to cover it. "I'll pass that on," she murmured, to her tea rather than his twitchy, prowling figure. "And it's good to see you alive, Mr Holmes."

He flinched. A little bit, his hand stuttering on the mantelpiece. She couldn't see his expression, only the back of his neck and the stiff, rigid cant of his head. But the flinch was somewhat noticeable, regardless.

"Ah," he said, a little uselessly. "Yes. About that."

Mary smiled. Not bothering to hide behind her tea, bright and clear and a little vicious, maybe. Just a touch. "You don't have to explain," she said, lightly. "John spent quite some time last night detailing your reasoning. In, shall we say, less than complimentary language?"

Holmes turned to her, his expression creased and rueful and more than a little nervous. "Yes, well," he temporised, waving a hand as though to shove the issue away. "Watson isn't very happy with me right now, I think."

" _Really_ ," she murmured, dryly. "I can't imagine why."

The sound he made was explosive, and largely inarticulate. Wordless, but not without meaning, maybe. Harsh and pained, annoyed and grieved and guilty. Anger and fear, and perhaps a touch of shame. Enough for her not to strike at him, anyway. 

"I'm here to apologise," he said at last, standing stiffly beside the empty fireplace, his hand braced against the mantelpiece as though to hold him up, his eyes downcast and defiantly not meeting hers. "Watson told me to, so here I am." Rapid and defiant and, underneath it, terribly frightened. Or so she thought, anyway.

She raised her eyebrows, at that. Oh, not that John might instruct his friend to apologise to her. John was a great believer in making amends. Though this one, she thought, was not so much about making Holmes apologise to _her_ as it was about making Holmes apologise to _him_ , by proxy, and in such a way that he need not immediately figure out what to do about it. John, since his friend had come back from the dead, had been ... flailing, somewhat desperately, for some idea of how to react, how to reconcile his feelings inside himself.

He was ... not alone in that, she thought. But howandever.

No. What surprised her, really, was that Holmes had actually _come_. Not to John, but to her. That he had come, and he had fluttered around, and he had actually worked himself up enough to at least say the words. Maybe not mean them, not yet, not in any way he understood. But at least to say them, and make the effort.

It was ... Well. It was enough for her to be hopeful. And it was enough to determine her course of action.

"Do sit down, Mr Holmes," she said carefully, setting down her cup with a soft and strangely final click on the saucer. He twitched vaguely, a schoolboy preparing to be reprimanded.

"I think I'd rather stand," he said, with that same forced flicker of a grin. Defiant and afraid, standing there before her.

Mary looked at him, then. Straight and uncompromising, forcing his eyes to meet hers, forcing him to hold her gaze. "And I would rather you sit," she said, very softly, but with nary an inch of give. The tone she had used as a governess to let it be known she was to be obeyed. 

It worked, perhaps less surprisingly than might be thought, as well on Holmes as it had on the children. He sat opposite her, with ill-grace and the same touch of belligerence that had almost pulled the doorbell down a little earlier. But he did sit.

And she didn't, not quite, laugh at him. He was far too fragile just yet for that.

"What are you sorry for?" she asked softly, when he'd at least settled enough to give the appearance of listening. "Dying, or not being dead?"

And good Lord, she might as well have shot him. For the way he jolted back in his chair, for the suddenly stark expression on his face, confused and horrified. Uncomprehending, a bit, but drifting close enough to knowing to be afraid.

"... Neither?" he tried, leaning forward now, wary and cautious. Treating her, she thought suddenly, with all the nervous caution he had treated Moriarty. "I thought he meant the train? Or Moriarty, almost getting you killed?"

Her lips pressed together at that, entirely of their own accord. Not the memories. More the question. The wary confusion in his tone, the almost hopeful edge. Holding out things he might understand, in lieu of things he didn't. And John might have meant those. Indeed, probably had. John was as confused, she thought, as afraid.

And, too, as foolish.

"Well," she said instead, light and careful. "The latter wasn't really your fault. I can hardly hold you accountable for the actions of every madman you come across, can I?" She smiled, gently, to lighten it. "Though an apology for the train _would_ be appreciated. You might at least have _warned_ me, you know."

He grinned, a little. Uneasily, carefully, putting on a touch of temper over the naked worry in his eyes. "Yes, well. There wasn't a lot of time. I _was_ trying to save your life at the time, remember?"

She acknowledged that with a nod, and a smile. "Yes. Still. Next time, a little warning, perhaps?" And oh, there. That strange spark of hope, and the stronger one of confusion.

"I'll see what I can do," he told her, and it was confused, and it was relieved, and she could see him already moving to stand, to distract, to leave it at that. An apology made, an apology accepted, and the promise of some small atonement to make up for it. Perfect, finished. Lets go with that, lets leave it that.

And she might have let him, just for the sheer relief in his face, but they had been doing this long enough, and if it couldn't change even after he'd _died_ , then there really was no hope for any of them. And Mary was not, particularly, in the mood to let that happen. To admit that defeat.

"That isn't what you're sorry for, though," she said, even as he stood. Quiet, and gentle, and watching the soft ripples through the cooling tea. Sensing more than seeing his stuttered halt, the tightening of his fingers on the edge of the table. Quick, and quickly hidden. But there.

"... No?" he asked softly. And that wasn't a question, that wasn't confused. That was _warning_ , that was a soft and very pointed line in the sand. A quiet, careful warning not to cross. 

But he hadn't watched John grieve. He hadn't seen John's face, the stiff, confused pain of it, the blank shock and the blank relief and the hollow ache as she met him at the station, and saw what had been done to him by this man's death. He hadn't felt John tremble in her arms, he hadn't heard the harsh, rasping cries of his grief. He hadn't seen John put himself, so slowly and so carefully, back together afterwards. 

Holmes hadn't seen that. She had. And his line didn't mean a damn thing to her. Not one _damn_ thing.

"I'm not a detective, Mr Holmes," she said at last. "I don't see the things you see." A small smile, a quirk of a lip. "Very few people see the things you see. But ..." She looked at him, looked up at him, met that dark, angry gaze. Met the fear lurking underneath it. "But I think there are things you don't see, either. I think there are things you can't see, that maybe I can." She smiled, stiff and fierce. "I wonder if you might listen, for a few moments, while I lay some of them out, and see if you might agree with them?"

He wanted to say no. She saw how very much he wanted that. But there was something else behind it, some confusion, some fear, some lingering memory of John's anger, maybe, of John's pain. Of his own. Some hope, some fear. And underneath them, more fundamentally than any of them, some _curiosity_. Because this man, of all men, did not like not to know.

Which was why she had him. Which was why he was hers, whether he knew it yet or not. And watching him sit back down, slowly and warily, those dark eyes glittering and that lip lifting softly in challenge, she knew she had it right.

"You love John," she opened. Watching his instinctive flinch, his instinctive denial. Ignoring them both. "When John and I first met, when John and I first fell in love, you tried to drive us apart. To make me leave. I don't think you're sorry for that. You loved him, and you didn't want him to love someone else. I'm not wrong about that, I think."

It wasn't really a question. Just as well, really, since he didn't answer. Maybe he didn't realise how much no answer was an answer in itself. Mary smiled crookedly, a twinge of her own pain, and sat forward a little.

"But then something changed. Maybe it was John almost dying, maybe you thought I might be worth something, maybe it was just that John, when he loves someone, is immovable, and you recognised that. I'm not really sure. But you stopped fighting us. You stopped driving yourself between us. For a while. A little while. You let us get married. You let John love me."

Let, she said. It wasn't really let. Holmes couldn't have changed that. Not really. John loved her. He looked at her, every day, and she saw that, she knew that, she had never, not once, feared that wasn't so. John _loved_ her, and she him, and Holmes could not have changed that.

But he could have damaged it. He could have fought it. He could have torn something apart, himself, John. He could have, and hadn't. He had brought John, staggering and hungover and wrecked, to their wedding, had kept safe the ring, had stood for John while he joined with her and been, if not fully gracious, at least genuinely loyal. At least genuinely standing beside them. He could have fought them, and instead he had done that.

"I didn't realise it then," she said, slowly, and perhaps a little cautiously herself. Perhaps a little afraid. "John didn't, I didn't. You'd pulled back, and thrown yourself into your work, and I think we'd thought that was simply your way of dealing with things. We didn't know. What you'd already found, what you were already involved in. And what ... what you were afraid it might cost you."

He was frowning, when she looked at him. A crease of confusion, eyes sharp on her face, trying to pull her thoughts from her expression the way he pulled histories from the stains of a coat, conspiracies from letters and silver spoons and whiffs of perfume. Mary looked up at him, and saw that he didn't understand what she was saying. Not at all, not even a little.

For some reason, in some part of her that loved him, just a little, purely for his own sake, she felt her heart crack a little for that.

"You thought you were going to die, didn't you," she said softly. Watching him, watching the dark, pained flicker behind his eyes, watching the confusion that still didn't fade. "Maybe at first, you were trying to distract yourself. But then you found Moriarty, and he found you, and when you stood for us at our wedding ... you already thought you were going to die, didn't you?"

He shook his head, a twitch of one shoulder. "He was a dangerous man," he said, softly. Wincing, one hand darting towards his shoulder, the one that had been torn, the one that had been used to ... to torture him. "And so am I, I am perfectly dangerous myself, or I wouldn't have triumphed. But he was ... he was a dangerous man."

"Yes," she agreed. Yes, oh yes. Her heart twisting, remembering fear and bullets on a train, remembering John's face, that blank, distant stare, when he had returned to her. Hating Moriarty, distantly and virulently, that little bit more every time she did. "He was. And that was why, wasn't it. That was why you let John love me. That was why you let him marry me." She shook her head, her smile thin and pressed and broken. "You let him marry me because you thought you were going to die, and you didn't want him to be alone. And you took him from me, one last time, because you wanted to be with him, one last time. Isn't ... isn't that right?"

She dropped her head, a little, let the cracks in her smile show, and he stared at her. And he didn't answer. An answer in itself. This time, every time. He didn't answer.

"What are you sorry for, Mr Holmes?" Mary asked him softly. So carefully, and so gently. "Are you sorry that you died, and let me have him? Or ... are you sorry that you're not dead, and now you're hurt, and he's hurt, and neither of you know how to fix it?"

His hand was white against the table edge. His hand was white, and shaking, and she could see all the answers she needed in his dark, desperate eyes, in his silence and his stillness and the creak of wood beneath pained fingers. All the things he was sorry for, all the things he was, in some small way, sorry for _not_ being sorry for. He trembled, sorry and not sorry and ready to be broken, and she felt that echo, strange and wild within her, of her own desperate grief. For him, and for John, for her and what she had, for her and what had been taken for her. She remembered.

"Do you know what I _want_ you to be sorry for?" she asked, soft and low and vicious. And pained. Placing her hands carefully on the table, lacing them thin and white against each other. Resting them tight and pained beside his. "What I want an apology for? From you, from him?"

He closed his eyes, a flutter of bruised lids, the way he had when she'd thrown her drink in his face, so long ago, when he'd only being trying to hurt her. When he'd been trying, and not succeeding, and before he had, so completely, without ever trying at all.

"What?" he asked, opening his eyes and trying a smile, a quick grin. Distraction and dissembling and desperate, desperate shield. "Tell me, Mrs Watson. What should I apologise for?"

She smiled back, grinned back, a distraction equally as desperate, and took a breath before she spoke. A breath before she said. "For not asking _me_ ," she said. Hard and pained. "For never, either of you, asking me if _I_ knew how to fix it."

He snapped his hand back, pulled it into his chest. His eyes shuttering, slamming closed. Opening again on pain, and a defiant refusal to shy away.

"I couldn't," he answered. Rigid and simple. "Ask me many things, Mrs Watson. Ask me anything. But don't ask me that."

" _Why_ ," she shot back. Leaning forward, pained and furious. "Why not? Why couldn't you ask?" Me. Why couldn't you ask me. And maybe she knew, she wasn't the important one, not to him, maybe she wasn't the one he would ask, but not even _John_ ...

"Because I know what your answer would be," he said instead. Cut across her thought, cut across her pain, and looked at her with wild challenge, with furious knowing. Fear. From the very first. He had been afraid of her, for no better reason than that John loved her, and she'd had _enough_.

"That you should leave?" she guessed, flatly. Watching his expression, watching the angry defiance there, the pain. "That John should stay with me, and you should leave?" A flutter, a stab of pain through her, of fear. "That you should _die_?"

A flicker through him, and she felt relief, some hope. Not that, she saw. Not quite that. "I died so Moriarty would," he corrected, flashed, but almost gently. Carefully, and almost gently. "Not for you. Not like that. I died because he promised to kill you, and ... And."

She slumped, rocked back against the narrow back of her chair, and let the relief sigh out of her. Let it show, desperate and alive, and watched that curious stare creep back into his expression, narrow and sharp and trying to pry her apart. She watched him look at her, and _see_.

"You didn't want me to die," he realised, slowly. Watching her, wondering at her. "Even though I love John. You don't want me to ..."

"You are an _idiot_ ," she rasped, ragged and utterly furious, the words dragged from her throat on a tide of rage she hadn't felt since ... She wasn't sure she'd ever felt it, actually. Not like this. "You and John both. You are the single most ... most idiotic, blind, _stupid_ pair of men I have _ever_ had the misfortune to be responsible for!"

He blinked at her. Startled and alarmed, staring blank and worried. And amused. Somewhere under there. Stunned and amused and softly, raggedly hopeful. "Ah," he said, the dawning of comprehension, and she _snarled_ at him.

" _Ah_ ," she repeated, coming to her feet. Standing over him, as stiff as he had been, earlier. Not from fear, though. No, oh no. Not from fear. "I watched him grieve," she hissed. "I saw his face when he came back, I saw his pain, I saw his heart shattered out from under him because he _loved_ you. You _idiot_. I love him, and he loves me, and I saw how your death almost killed him, and you think I want you _dead_?"

"Uh," he managed, staring up at her in startled fear. Sherlock Holmes, the greatest mind of his generation. Oh _yes_.

"If you had _asked_ me," she told him, clipped and tight and shaking with anger. "Either of you. If you had _asked_. I might have told you not to worry. I might have told you not to be afraid. I might have told you that you didn't have to drive me away, that you didn't have to drive yourself away, that you didn't have to hurt him and worry him and drag him around every which way because you couldn't _leave_ but you also couldn't _stay_. I might have told you that I could _fix it_. If you had _asked_."

He lifted a hand, raised it half-placatingly towards her, and some part of her that wasn't quivering with the desire to shake him was amused by that, amused that this man who took on villains as a matter of course should be so desperately, childishly afraid of her. Some part of her was amused by that.

The rest was simply heartbroken. And more than a little enraged.

"And now," she said, letting herself drop back into her chair, "now John wants you to apologise to me. Except he doesn't. John wants you to apologise to _him_ , except he doesn't know what for, and _he_ wants to apologise to me, except he doesn't know how, and everyone's _sorry_ , and nothing's getting _fixed_. And I don't know about you, Mr Holmes, but my patience right now is fraying quite rapidly!" 

She snatched up her cup, downed stone cold tea simply to have something to _do_ , simply to have something to quench the shaking fire in her gut. It was vile, utterly revolting, and he stared at her. Him, a man who apparently drank eye medicine just for something to do. He blinked at her as if _she_ was the strange one, she was the alarming one, and he jolted half in fear when she snapped the cup back onto the saucer with rather more violence than was really advisable. Or necessary.

Mary took a breath. Deep and steadying, if not particularly calming. She took a breath, and squared her shoulders, and straightened in her chair in order to look him in the eye. "Something to say, Mr Holmes?"

He shook his head, a smile creeping forward. Involuntary, this one, startled and genuine and making him look strangely young, for a moment. "Not at all," he disavowed, grinning faintly at her. "I was simply thankful you didn't throw it in my face, this time."

She scowled. "Oh, don't _tempt_ me," she muttered, but he was smiling still, and maybe she was a little, too. Just for a moment.

And then ...

"So," he said. Very, very cautiously, after a long moment's silence. "Ah. I'm sorry?" His smile flickered, genuine and sheepish, still a touch challenging. "I apologise, Mrs Watson." A bright crease around his eyes. "Truly. I'm sorry."

She blew out a breath. Undignified, so very undignified, but this was Sherlock Holmes. Dignity, she had found, really was not the point, with this man.

"Accepted," she said, shortly. And then, a little more genuinely, actually looking at him: "Accepted, Mr Holmes. And ... I'm sorry too. For what little it might be worth."

He shook his head. Half-smiled, stopped when it didn't work, stopped when it wasn't what he was looking for. Simply looked at her, instead, eyes dark and so carefully, warily hopeful. "Accepted," he said in turn, and she rather thought he meant it.

"All right," she said. Sitting upright, reaching up to twitch her hair back into place, push back the wisps that had fallen forward in her fury. Trying, she admitted wryly, to put herself back together. In more ways than one. "All right," she said again, almost to herself, and turned to look at him. Properly, carefully, her eyes as narrow and prying as his own. He bore it with ill grace, really. But he didn't shy away.

"And now?" he asked her, very quietly. With a touch of wry dignity, and still that flicker of fear. "Can we fix this, Mrs Watson?"

She pursed her lips, looking thoughtfully at him. Partly musing, partly to make him wait a little bit. Childish, but he drew that out in people, didn't he? And warm, because he drew that too, even if he shouldn't, even if _she_ shouldn't, when he loved the man she loved, and had tried to take him from her. Warm, because he was who he was, and she couldn't quite help loving him a little too.

"... Mary," she said at last. Watching him blink a little stupidly, and smiling for it. "You can call me Mary. And ... yes. Yes, I think we can."

Or rather, yes, she thought they _would_ , because at this point she really couldn't be having with anything else. And he smiled at her, quick and hesitant, so she thought that might be all right, too.

Now. All she had to do was get that through to _John_. Which promised to be about as much fun, when her husband was at least as much trouble as Sherlock Holmes, and doubly in denial on top of it. Oh, they were such _trouble_ , the pair of them. So much trouble.

And, in the end ... so very, very worth it.


End file.
